Featured Resource of the Month — David P. Gushee, PhD, Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, gives an update on his current research entitled, "The Sanctity of Life: Rethinking Eternal Truths in a New Political Era."

Podcast
 

Also This Week — Extending Life Conference Promotional
The first 10 people to register for the conference and mention this weekly email will receive a free copy of Aging, Death, & the Quest for Immortality.

Quote of the Month —

"The noble Lord also said that the campaign for responsible fatherhood was lost a couple of generations ago. If that is true, then let us fight the campaign again and win it. Let us not simply say, 'It’s gone, it’s lost, forget it, it’s a new world.' The noble Lord also said that science could change ethics. No, my Lords, science cannot change ethics. Ethics are ethics, morals are morals. What is right is right, what is wrong is wrong, and science cannot change that. If that were so, we would be living in a morass, in a world of moral relativism. If there is one thing that is going wrong in the world at the moment, it is that we are losing sight of the immutability of certain rights and wrongs and ethics."

Planning to attend the Extending Life: Setting the Agenda for the Ethics of Aging, Death, and Immortality conference or pre-conference Institutes, hosted by The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity, March 3-8, 2008?  Why not maximize your experience by attending it for academic credit?

The preconference institutes and the conference will be available for graduate and undergraduate level credit.  Institute instructors include William Cheshire, MD; C. Ben Mitchell, PhD; Robert Orr, MD; Joyce Shelton, PhD; and Michael Sleasman, PhD.  Conference wrap-around instructors include Dennis Hollinger, PhD (graduate level) and Joyce Shelton, PhD (undergraduate level). 

Hours can be credited toward degree programs at Trinity International University (relocation to Trinity is not required) or can be transferred to other institutions.   

Seize this opportunity, call 888.246.3844 to obtain a syllabus or more information.

Are you a Member of CBHD? Would you like to become one?
Annual membership with the Center includes a subscription to Dignitas (the Center's quarterly newsletter) and Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics, as well as discounted registration for all Center conferences. If your membership has recently lapsed or you would like to become a member, please visit our website at: http://www.cbhd.org/membership/.

Summer Internships with NIH
The Office of Biotechnology Activities at the National Institutes of Health is accepting applications for paid summer internships for students interested in gaining hands-on policy experience in a Federal government office in the areas of biosecurity, gene transfer, genetic technologies, and clinical research policy. Applications will be accepted until March 1, 2008.

Stem Cells World Congress
February 12-13, 2008
Marriott San Diego La Jolla
La Jolla, CA
Tel: 858/ 587-1414, email: Mathias.Kuo@marriott.com

America's Broken Healthcare System
The 2008 International Bioethics Conference
February 21-22, 2008 at the
Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa in Honolulu, Hawaii

Emerging Problems in Neurogenomics: Ethical, Legal & Policy Issues at the Intersection of Genomics & Neuroscience
February 29, 2008
Cowles Auditorium, Hubert H. Humphrey Center
University of Minnesota

Medical Professionals Conference: Balancing Faith, Family and Practice
April 10-12, 2008
A Focus on the Family Event
Tel: 800/ 232-6459, or download Conference Brochure

5th International Symposium of the Definition of Death Network
May 20-23, 2008
Plaza America Convention Center
Varadero Beach, Cuba

Emerging Issues in Embryo Donation and Adoption
May 29-31, 2008
Marriot Crystal Gateway
Arlington, Virginia

ASBH 10th Annual Meeting-Future Tense
The ASBH 10th Annual Meeting will take place October 23-26, 2008 at the Cleveland Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland, OH. TheCall for Proposals will be open soon on the ASBH Web site and will be open until March 1, 2008. The theme for the meeting is Future Tense. We invite you to think about the many meanings one might extrapolate from this term, for instance looking ahead to the future of bioethics and the medical humanities or what about bioethics and the medical humanities may make the future tense or uncertain or perhaps even looking back over the last 10 years to discuss the major issues and changes, what was resolved and what might the future still bring.

Outsourced “Wombs-For-Rent” In India
Rising Trend Of Indian Surrogates Carrying Babies For Infertile Women In U.S., Taiwan, Britain (CBS News)

A conversation with Story Landis, head of the NIH Stem Cell Task Force
In late November, two teams of scientists announced that differentiated human cells can be genetically engineered into a state, induced pluripotency, mirroring that of embryonic stem cells. Nature Reports Stem Cells spoke with Dr. Story Landis, head of the Stem Cell Task Force at the United States National Institutes of Health to learn what’s next. (Nature)

The Year in Nanotech
Better batteries and supersticky glues are on the horizon. (Technology Review)

China Offers Unproven Medical Treatments
They’re paralyzed from diving accidents and car crashes, disabled by Parkinson’s, or blind. With few options available at home in America, they search the Internet for experimental treatments — and often land on Web sites promoting stem cell treatments in China. (Associated Press)

Medicare Drug Plan Fuels Health-Care Spending
The new Medicare prescription drug plan was largely responsible for an 18.7 percent increase in Medicare spending in 2006, which was double the increase in spending from the year before, U.S. health officials report. (HealthDay)

Stem cell breakthrough leaves embryos unharmed
For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been obtained without having to destroy the embryos they came from.

The breakthrough sidesteps the primary ethical objection to human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research – that embryos must perish to yield up hESCs. (New Scientist)

First bioartificial heart may signal end of organ shortage
The world’s first beating, retooled “bioartificial heart” is described today in the journal Nature Medicine by University of Minnesota researchers in research that could pave the way to a new treatment for the 22 million people worldwide who live with heart failure.

The team took a whole heart and removed cells from it. Then, with the resulting architecture, chambers, valves and the blood vessel structure intact, repopulated the structure with new cells. (Telegraph)

UK: Green light for hybrid research
Regulators have given scientists the green light to create human-animal embryos for research.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority granted permission after a consultation showed the public were “at ease” with the idea. (BBC)

Hospital won’t remove disabled girl’s womb
A mother who provoked an ethical row when she claimed she had persuaded doctors to remove her disabled daughter’s womb said yesterday that the backlash had made the hospital change its mind. (Telegraph)

Surgeons attempt to repair hearts with stem cell injections
British scientists have been given the go-ahead to begin potentially ground-breaking experiments using injections of stem cells to repair patients’ damaged hearts. The team hopes to repair the organs of people who have suffered the most severe heart attacks. (The Guardian)

1,000 Genomes Project: Expanding the Map of Human Genetics
The number of sequenced human genomes will soon swell to more than 1,000 as part of a new international research consortium’s effort to trace the potential genetic origins of disease. But first the mother, father and adult child of a European-ancestry family from Utah and a Yoruba-ancestry family from Nigeria will join an anonymous individual as well as famous geneticists Craig Venter and James Watson as part of the handful of humans to have on record a complete readout of their roughly three billion pairs of DNA. And these six will also each have their genetic codes examined at least 20 times, providing 10 times the accuracy of existing genetic sequences as well as paving the way for the ambitious effort dubbed the 1,000 Genomes Project, which will comprehensively map humanity’s genetic variation. (Scientific American)

Scientists Create First Synthetic Bacterial Genome — Largest Chemically Defined Structure Synthesized In The Lab
A team of 17 researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) has created the largest man-made DNA structure by synthesizing and assembling the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0. This work, published online today in the journal Science by Dan Gibson, Ph.D., et al, is the second of three key steps toward the team’s goal of creating a fully synthetic organism. In the next step, which is ongoing at the JCVI, the team will attempt to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on the synthetically made genome. (Science Daily)

Flawed embryos seen as source for stem cells
From what is now considered medical waste might be fashioned bio-treasure: stem cells able to form into any of the body’s 220 cell types, including blood, nerves, bone, and skin tissue, new research suggests. (The Boston Globe)

Death of the father: British scientists discover how to turn women’s bone marrow into sperm
British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life.

The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own. (Daily Mail)

The Great Kidney Bazaar
The unearthing of an illegal kidney trade in Gurgaon, a Delhi suburb, could have hardly come as a surprise since India has long been notorious for being the ‘warehouse for kidneys’—a great kidney bazaar. Even less surprising was the fact that the alleged kingpin of this racket, a doctor with various aliases who had earned crores of rupees through unethical means, managed to escape when police raided his ‘clinic’. The police find it easier to catch the small time criminal, not the affluent ones. (Asian Tribune)

Each week the top news stories, as determined by the staff at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity are sent out via email.

[Note: News stories and events do not represent the Center's views. For additional commentary on many of the issues they raise, please see the CBHD web site at www.cbhd.org.]

Please visit http://www.bioethics.com for daily posts on bioethics news and issues.

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The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CBHD, its staff, board or supporters. Permission to reprint granted as long as The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity and the web address for this article is referenced.